Polish police arrest MPs in presidential palace
Polish authorities have apprehended the former interior minister and deputy interior minister within the presidential palace in Warsaw, marking an unprecedented day of political drama.
Last month, Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik received a two-year jail sentence for abusing power during their tenure leading an anti-corruption office in 2007.
The arrests underscore the ongoing political tensions between the Law and Justice (PiS) party and the new pro-EU coalition.
Having been elected as PiS MPs in October, the two men refused to acknowledge the recent court decision, citing a pardon granted by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, in 2015. Despite being stripped of their parliamentary mandates, both Kaminski and Wasik, along with President Duda, argue that they remain legally elected MPs due to the presidential pardon.
Despite a court-issued warrant on Monday for their detention, President Duda invited the two to the Presidential Palace on Tuesday for a ceremony swearing in two of their former colleagues as presidential advisers.
Following the event, they briefly spoke to reporters within the palace grounds, with Kaminski expressing gratitude to Duda for support and suggesting they would be “political prisoners” if arrested.
The situation unfolded as Prime Minister Donald Tusk termed it “unbelievable” during a subsequent news conference, emphasizing the need to respect the court’s ruling and implying that President Duda was aiding the individuals in evading justice.
“There is no rulebook for the prime minister or interior minister on how to act when convicts are in the Presidential Palace. This is taking advantage of a situation in which no one will use force against such an institution as the president,” he added.
Following the arrests, several hundred PiS supporters demonstrated outside the palace in support of the men.
Last year, the Polish Supreme Court ruled Mr Duda’s 2015 pardon was invalid because it was issued while the men were appealing against their conviction, ie before the original conviction was final. Mr Duda disputes that and insists the pardon is still binding.
To complicate matters, the Constitutional Tribunal and a new Supreme Court chamber, both of which are staffed by judges nominated by PiS, have ruled in favour of Mr. Duda.
Mr Tusk said Mr Duda could resolve the stand-off by pardoning the men again, now that the ruling is final. But that would call into question the legal status of the initial pardon.
Mr Tusk’s coalition took office last month pledging to undo PiS’s changes to the judiciary, public media, and civil service that the European Commission and many other international bodies say have undermined the rule of law in Poland.
One of its first acts was to reform the state TV, radio and news agency that PiS had transformed into a propaganda mouthpiece for its government.
But its methods were similar to PiS’s, first using a government minister to sack media boards and install new people ahead of planned legislative reform.
The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights acknowledged PiS had made it legally difficult to reform the public media, which it said required “urgent reform” because it had become “a propaganda mouthpiece” under PiS, but said the new government’s changes “raise serious doubts”.
Former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the BBC Mr Tusk’s government talked loudly about democratic standards but fell well short in practice.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented attack on the rule of law. Tusk’s government decided it could take over public television and media by force. This has nothing to do with democratic standards. We have not seen such brutal government action since communism. It is all the more outrageous that this is done by people who have such slogans of democracy on their lips,” Mr Morawiecki said.
Given PiS’s record of controlling state institutions while in office, many Tusk supporters argue such accusations are the height of hypocrisy.
